The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.
crisisgroup.org
UN chief calls for sanctions on extremists in northern Mali, warns of humanitarian crisis | Washington Post
By AP
The U.N. secretary-general called Wednesday on the Security Council to sanction extremists who have taken over northern Mali, and he warned of worsening security and humanitarian crises in the African country.
FULL ARTICLE (Washington Post)
Photo: UN
Comment | For justice and civilians, don’t rule out regime change | The Globe and Mail
By LOUISE ARBOUR
Civilian casualties in Syria shock our consciences, but there is also a frustrating acknowledgment that military intervention there might do more harm than good. The best option to protect Syrians is peace; ending the conflict should also end the massacres. But is the reverse true? Would an initiative aimed solely at protecting civilians resolve the conflict? Not necessarily.
Responsibility to protect – the emerging principle that states can intervene in other states to prevent mass atrocities, invoked in the case of Libya – suffers from the same uncomfortable relationship with peace that justice does. In both cases, the desired objective – protecting civilians or bringing criminals to justice – falls short of, or is often even at odds with, the objective of peace. Humanitarian or judicial objectives address only the manner in which the conflict unfolds, not its ultimate resolution.
In Libya, this dilemma was resolved by merging the three objectives. First, justice: The United Nations Security Council referred the matter to the International Criminal Court. Second, civilians: It authorized “all necessary measures” to protect them. Third, presumably hoping to achieve the first two objectives, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization undertook to bring an end to the conflict by effecting (or supporting, depending on your perspective) regime change.
But the manner in which this happened, with NATO widely thought to have overinterpreted its mandate, exposes weaknesses in the current approach. Under both international criminal justice and R2P, the interventionist role of the international community is predicated on the fact that the state in crisis, which has the primary responsibility for protecting its people and dispensing justice, is “unwilling or unable” to do so.
FULL ARTICLE (The Globe and Mail)
Photo: Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Members of the United Nations Security Council met Monday to discuss options for ending violence in Syria with the United States continuing to clash with Russia and China on strategy. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has maintained that there is no equivalence between the premeditated assaults of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the self-defense measures espoused by the opposition. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), “Faced with mounting casualties and a political deadlock, outside actors at best have been ineffectual, at worst have poured oil on fire.” Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has reported that Syria is laying landmines along its borders with Lebanon and Turkey. This practice is of increased concern as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported that already about 300,000 people have fled abroad, 200,000 are internally displaced, and greater numbers are expected to flee for the border. Elsewhere, Syrian opposition activists reported a massacre in Homs overnight during which dozens of men, women, and children were assaulted and some set on fire in an presumed effort to frighten remaining citizens out of Homs. Syrian forces were also reported to have killed up to 55 people in the Idlib province, where army defectors killed 10 soldiers. According to the United Nations General Assembly, the death toll in the yearlong uprising has exceeded 8,000. This staggering violence prompted the main opposition group, the Syrian National Council, to call for”urgent” international military intervention.
As veteran mediator Kofi Annan prepares to visit Damascus to try to rein in Syria’s turmoil, he could be forgiven for thinking his time would be far more usefully spent in Moscow, the Arab state’s old strategic ally.
Analysts say Russia is the one outside power that could determine whether the March 10 mission by the joint UN-Arab League special envoy prevents a fragmented global response from degenerating into a violent scramble for regional supremacy.
The United Nations says more than 7,500 people have been killed in a nearly year-old crackdown on demonstrators against President Bashar al-Assad who drew inspiration from other “Arab Spring” revolts across the Middle East and North Africa.
For many, Syria’s internal conflict is turning into a proxy struggle between rival international groupings, between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in the Middle East and, globally, along Cold War lines between democracies and authoritarian leaders. The question for many, and perhaps also for Annan, a former U.N. Secretary-General, is whether president-elect Vladimir Putin will be ready to cut political support for his counterpart Bashar al-Assad in return for a deal that somehow shores up Moscow’s long-term influence with its closest Arab ally.
Lamenting an international response it said veered from the ineffectual to the inflammatory, the International Crisis Group (ICG) suggested that Annan’s best hope lay in enlisting Russian support for a negotiated, orderly transition of power that preserved the integrity of Syrian state institutions.
“Annan faces very long odds,” a March 5 ICG note said, noting disarray among Assad’s numerous foreign foes had allowed the government to live “in denial” about the depth of the crisis. But it suggested Russia might be persuaded to shift position, so as to convince Damascus the balance of power was tilting against it and moves on a transition should now start.
Syria has so far brushed off international pressure to halt its violent response to the uprising, bolstered by the resistance of Russia and China to any U.N. resolutions which they fear could be used to justify foreign intervention.
Assad reiterated Tuesday that his country faced “bids to weaken and destabilize it,” but told a visiting Ukrainian politician that Syrians had shown their determination “to pursue reforms in parallel with encountering the terrorism backed by foreign sides,” state news agency SANA reported.
A Chinese envoy, former ambassador to Damascus Li Huaxin, arrived in Syria Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported, and was due to meet Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem Wednesday.
The U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, will also travel to Damascus Saturday for what would be his first visit since he was named to the post last month.
The appointment of Annan, who has called for all parties to cooperate to help to end the violence in Syria, offers a chance to “rescue fading prospects” for a negotiated solution to the crisis, the International Crisis Group said.
But the Brussels-based conflict resolution group said Annan would have to convince Russia to throw its political and diplomatic weight behind a plan to transfer powers from Assad, ensure an overhaul of Syrian security forces and set in place a process of “transitional justice and national reconciliation.”
It warned that the likely alternative to a political solution involved international steps to arm Syrian rebels, which “could plunge the nation ever deeper into a bloody civil war without prospects for a resolution in the foreseeable future and almost certainly trigger counter-steps by regime allies, thus intensifying the budding proxy war” in Syria.
Syrian forces bombarded opposition strongholds in the city of Homs for the sixth consecutive day on Thursday, ignoring international calls for an end to what UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon denounced as “appalling brutality”.
Russia won’t back the U.S. and its Arab allies in a United Nations resolution to oust Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad as it seeks to defend its most important lever in the Middle East, said researchers from Moscow to London.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a diplomatic push in the UN Security Council today to sanction Syria, which hosts Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union and is a buyer of Russian weapons. Russia is willing to use its Security Council veto to block the resolution, which calls on Assad to transfer powers to his deputy, a senior foreign ministry official said today.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in the Syrian uprising, according to the UN. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants to return to the presidency in March elections and last week accused the U.S. of needing “vassals” rather than allies. He opposed President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to refrain from vetoing the UN resolution that paved the way for military action in Libya.
“The Russians aren’t likely to back down, even if it’s going to get very uncomfortable for them to continue backing Syria,” said Thomas Gomart, director of the Russian Center at the French Institute of Foreign Relation in Paris. “If they surrender on this issue, their whole parade in the Middle East would crumble.”
‘Not a Friend’
Failure to secure UN approval for the departure of Assad may bolster his regime, prolonging a standoff as the U.S. and Europe step up sanctions to pressure Syrian ally Iran to give up its suspected nuclear weapons program.
Russia argues that the UN-sanctioned bombing of Libya by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was abused to bring about regime change and that the U.S. and western European governments are trying to repeat that scenario in Syria.
“We are not a friend, we are not an ally of President Assad,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television today in Sydney. “We never said President Assad remaining in power is the solution to the crisis. What we did say is it is up to the Syrians themselves to decide how to run the country.”
The West is putting pressure on Syria because the country refuses to break off its alliance with Iran and not for repressing the opposition, Russian Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev said Jan. 12.
‘Heightened Instability’
“Russia appears concerned about heightened instability in the area at large, the prospect of further empowering Islamists, and the West’s typically cavalier attempts to push its agenda under the guise of noble moral values,” Peter Harling, director for Egypt, Syria and Lebanon at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said in e-mailed comments on Jan. 29.
Alleged war crimes or crimes against humanity can be referred for investigation to the ICC’s prosecutors by the Security Council or by ICC member states. Non-member states can also ask the ICC to assume jurisdiction on their territories. The Palestinians did just that in October 2009, requesting the prosecution of Israeli officials who carried out the 2008-2009 conflict with Hamas in Gaza and earlier “acts committed on the territory of Palestine.”
But the ICC chief prosecutor never decided whether the entity Palestine has enough standing to make such a claim. Statehood recognition by the General Assembly could strongly influence any future ruling, said Robert Malley, the Middle East program director for the International Crisis Group. The Holy See, the only current non-member state at the U.N., was allowed to play a role in the writing of the Rome Statute.
And that’s what frightens Israel.
Israeli generals and defense officials involved in the Gaza war have already canceled trips to international conferences in London and Madrid out of fear they could be served with international arrest warrants there.
“Israelis are afraid of being hauled to The Hague,” Malley said.
Photo: UN
